Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1887-10-26
A TELEGRAPH STORY.
An Amusing and Pathetlc Page In tho His
tory of Pioneer TeIs graphy.


An AmustDg AND tatnetlc rage In tho dfs
tory of Pioneer TeIs raphy.
New York Evening Post.
The sale of the Baltimore and Ohio
telegraph recslls the story of Ezra Cor
nell, founder Of Cornell University.
Forty-four years ago last July Ezra
Cornell, then thirty-six years of age, left
ithaca lot Portland, Ne. He was the
agent 3f an unsuccessful pillow. Fifteen
years Before he mad arrived at Ithaca, q
tsepgF young man looking for work.
BE had walked to Ithaca from his
fathers house, some forty miles dis
tant. Since that time he had
worked in the cotton mill at Ithaca as
oyerseer of the machinery CHE mill stood
on the site Of the university building of
to-day, "Csscadilla Placer, and had
served as millwright at the Touring and
plaster mills near Ithaca for some years.
He had been engineer-ip- chief of the
building of the great flume In Fall creek
snd the stone dam. He had good, clean
business and social record, and yet the
summer of 1843 found him poor man,
walking most of the way from Ithaca to
Maine to close up his plow interests in
that state.
Arriving at Portland, he went to the
Office of the Maine Farmer. Francis 0.
J, Smith, the editor, hsd advocated his
plow, and cordial friendship had re-
suited from their correspondence. He
! found Smith on his knees in the middle
of the office, chalk in hand, the mold
board of plow lying oy his side. Smith
was trying to explain to q grinning pillow
manufacturer something he wanted him
to make. At the sight of Cornell he
| sprang to his feet and grssped his hand.
HCornell, you are the very man l want
to see. l must have a machine, and l
can't make this man understand my idea.
Unjust have something for laying tele-
graph pipe under ground"
| Cornell listened closely to all ne had to
say. Congress had appropriated $4,000
that Professor Morse might build an ex-
kperimental telegraph line between Wash
| iDgtOn and Baltimore. Smith had taken
the contract TO lay the pipe under ground
a. 500 per mile. The ditch must be two
feet deep, the pipe must be well covered
He wanted two machines one to excavate
and the other to fill up the trench.
Cornell at once sketched rough dia-
gram of g machine that he thought would
answer; one machine, not two. It WAS
something like 8 ploW; it was to be
and cover it as it moved along. Smith
| was not easily Convinced that it would
work, and much time was spent in dis
cussing it.
"Well, 60 to work and make ma
chine" said Smith, at last. off it is sue
cessful, 1 will pay you $50 or $100, or
any reasonable price"
Cornell went into shop and made his
machine. Smith wrote to Professor
Morse to come up and see if it was sue
cess. The trial was made on 8 farm with
four yoke of oxenI strong CAD, and
clumsy driver; but the machine was
perfect success, and so cornell agreed to
go to Baltimore with it and Stay pipe"
for the new telegraph on the line Of the
Baltim re and Ohio Railroad.
The story of that pipe-Iaying and the
ultimate failure of the underground
scheme when $23, 900 OF the appropriation
had been spent is one of the amusing pa
thetic pages in the history of pioneer tel
egrsphy. There was a blunder made
in the method Of casting Of the
pipe, which was discovered and
reporte at the outset by Cornell,
Ebut his advice was unheeded by
the scientists of the project. He knew
that The insulation Was defective, and
thSt failure W6s sure; so he was not sur
prised, when-ten miles had been laid, to
see Professor Morse coming toward him
one day with an anxious face.
Cornell" said he, taking the engineer
aside, "you must contrive to stop this
work for a few dag, so that the papers
will not know why it was interrupted.
1 must make some experiments before
any more pipe is laid"
Cornell stepped back to his machine.
"Hurrah, boys, whip up your mules: we
must lay another length before we quit
tonight" and grasping the handles Of
the plow, he managed, when the tesmsters
cracked their whips, TO can. it over so IS
to catch into point of rock, wrecking it
completely. That meant stay of pro-
ceedings for q week at least.
The well-known quarrel between Morse
and F. o. j. Smith grew out OF this fail
ure of pipe telegraph. Smith considered
it failure of magnetic telegraph; Morse
of q system of construction only. Cor
nell's practical kno Tledge OfSmech1nics
proved to the satisfaction of Prof. Morse
that the wires could be reinsulated 81
small expense. Cornell was appointed
mechanical assistant of the magnetic tel
egrsph by the Secretary of the Treasury,
and went to work on the basement of the
Patent Office He studied the subject OF
electrical science in the meantime and
wrote in his "reminiscences: "While l
pressed on with removing the wires from
the pipes, did not hasten the reinsuls-
ton. as was confident the order would
soon come to erect the wires on poles"
Ezra Cornell accumulated the nucleus
Of his fortune by building telegraph lines.
He engaged to build the section between
Fort Lee and Philadelphia in 1916 for
$1,000, demonstrating his faith in tie pro-
iect by subscribing $500 for the line. He
made $4,000 out of his contract for the
"New York, Albany and Buffalo," and
that with other transactions gave him his
nest egg for investment in the Western
Union in 1857. Cornell gave the great mo-
nopofy it's name; ana Hiram SIbley was
undoubtedly the maker of his fortune. Il
is fitting that their names should be
united in the university whose fundsmen.
tai idea is education in the mechanic
arts. Ezra Corne:'s financial affairs
were nv no means snund when $40 0O0 in